A number of different devices have been available for use in the communications industry to connect corresponding conductors of two cables at a splice location. As the number of conductors to be connected together in any one application increased, the industry resorted to multiple contact connectors such as those shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,858,158, which issued Dec. 31, 1974 in the names of Henn et al and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,822 which issued July 11, 1978 in the names of A. W. Carlisle and D. R. Frey. It has been estimated that over one billion pair splice conections, for example, are made each year by the telephone industry and a majority of these are made with connectors which are disclosed in the above-identified patents and which include double ended, slotted beam contact elements.
The connector disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,822 which is commonly referred to as a modular connector and which is specially designed to mass terminate intra-bay and inter-bay wiring in telephone central offices and to bridge as well as to splice cables, lends itself well to new equipment installation, equipment retrofits, in-service equipment cutovers and equipment moves for reuse. In the use of this connector, insulated conductors of a first cable which are to be connected to conductors of a second cable are formed about mandrels which are received in opposed openings of a plastic receptacle. Similarly, the conductors of the second cable are formed about mandrels which are received in another receptacle after which the receptacles are joined through a connector module which includes a plurality of the contact elements.
One of the important steps in an efficient connectorization process is the simultaneous assembly of a plurality of the insulated conductors to the mandrels. This must be accomplished in such a way that the conductors are trimmed to length and inserted into appropriate conductor-receiving portions of the mandrels so that they remain secured to the mandrels as the mandrels are handled and assembled to the connector module.
It should be apparent that a tool which is used to assemble conductors to a connector mandrel must be portable and uncomplicated, yet it must be capable of imparting sufficient forces to the conductors to secure them to the mandrels within associated tight-fitting recesses as well as being capable of severing excess lengths of the conductors. One commercially available tool for assembling multiple contact connectors and conductors which is operated by compressed air requires excessive support equipment and is cumbersome, thereby making its use in manholes, on telephone poles and in crowded central offices awkward.
A hand-operated tool for assembling multiple contact stackable connectors is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,972,101 and includes a support for elements of a connector and a head which is mounted on the tool and operated to seat the conductors in terminals of a connector element held in the support. In another hand-operated tool shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,148,138 which issued on Apr. 10, 1979, a tool head is automatically positioned with respect to each stage of assembly of a stackable connector to control the application of forces required at each stage.
The prior art seemingly does not include a hand-operated tool for trimming conductors to length while assembling the conductors to an element of a connector by forming the conductors about the connector element. Such a tool would overcome the obvious lack of economy in a sequence of steps which includes the attaching of the conductors to the element and the subsequent trimming of the conductors to length. However, such a tool must be able to trim the conductors and form them while preventing their movement relative to the connector element.